Adventures in Onionism

Great. Now in addition to all the pictures of me hiking naked on the Internet (that I put there myself), there's also video of me crying (while fully clothed). I've mentioned the story from the video on the blog before , and it's one of my favorites. In addition to just being a cool story, I find it really interesting in regards to my motivations for doing long hikes. Most of the time I tell people that I do long hikes to get away from it all, people included (in the Backpacker article, I put it in my typically crude terms and said I wanted to give society the finger, but I digress.) But then when I'm asked what my favorite experience was, it's never "there was this awesome sunset this one day when I was all by myself," it's always starts, "I met this cool guy," or "I met this cool lady," and goes from there. And the same goes for trail running. I love going and getting lost in Tilden by myself, but the comradery at races i...

You know what was a horrible, horrible idea? Loading my iPod with Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering for a fixed-time running event. Anyway, I finished the SF One-Day at 9 AM this morning. First, a huge thanks to everybody who sent me e-mails during the race, and to Ashley, Marcus, and Amy for coming out and running (walking, really) with me. Before starting, my goal was to cover 100 miles. Then I had trouble running slower than 5 mph, so I wanted to keep up that pace. Then I realized that was ridiculous so I just wanted to run every step of the way, and I was back to the goal of 100 miles. Then I realized running the whole time was crazy so I just wanted to keep moving the entire time. Then finally I wanted to sleep, so I did. I ended up taking breaks of about 15 minutes, 90 minutes, and 45 minutes. I probably didn't need the last break, but the 90 minute one was wonderful for the legs, which were hurting thanks to the 40% pavement. During the race I wasn...

I am going to be running laps around Crissy Field in San Francisco non-stop from 9 AM Saturday to 9 AM Sunday. If you're in the area, come say hello and run a few laps with me. If you're not, click here to send me e-mail that the race directors will print out and give to me in real-time. I'm sure I'll be going crazy at 3:42 in the morning and would love to hear from you. Oh, and what else have I been doing lately? I volunteered against Prop 8 (awesome), did a bunch of TA work (not that awesome), went to a high school buddy's wedding in Madison, Wisconsin (awesome), and finished reading Michael Lewis (of Moneyball fame)'s The Blind Side (not nearly as good as Moneyball ). Me and PC at his wedding.

I just ran the Dick Collins Firetrails 50-miler . I'd been told that the course was fast, but I wasn't sure what to expect and was still a little worried about the fact that I didn't feel like I trained very well and that the cutoff was 13 hours, which is faster than I'd ever done a 50 before. Of course, the only 50 I'd done before is Mt. Diablo , which, with 13,340 feet of climbing has more climbing per-mile than all but maybe a couple 100's ( Hard Rock , Wasatch ), and has more climbing that any other 50 I know of other than maybe San Juan Solstice . Alas, Firetrails is no Diablo. I got to the 15-mile aid station in just under 3 hours and thought "What? I'm not this fast. Oh well, if I'm doing 5 mph, I guess I better finish in under 10 hours." And I did, in 9:52. But most of the time I was thinking about how much I prefer courses that once every hour or so make you yell "What!? You've got to be f---ing kidding me," as you s...

A few people have asked me about the economic crisis. The most accurate and enjoyable sources I have come across are all from NPR. A This American Life show from a few months ago ( The Giant Pool of Money ) explained everything as it stood then, and they just released another ( Another Frightening Show About the Economy ). Also, the correspondents are doing a daily podcast ( Planet Money ) and blog of their own.

I spent the weekend volunteering in Reno. Tangentially, I spent the night in a hotel room with three other friends who also don't own a television, and thus we giddily spent the night watching trash like We Are Marshall , Project Runway, and the ridiculously good-looking Gina Carano kicking the snot out of Kelly Kobold. After the debate last night I went to a talk by Seymour Hersh . I completely respect the guy's journalism, but I was disappointed by his talk. He flitted about from tangent to tangent, and would jump from moving and traumatic stories about the My Lai Massacre or Abu Ghraib (for example, when he first went to visit a soldier involved in My Lai, Paul Meadlo , his mother told him "I sent them a good boy and they gave me back a murderer,") to jaw-droppingly crude ad hominem attacks. I guess I'm torn about it--I agree with what he was saying, I just would've liked a little less bloviation. My folks live in California, which I'm pretty sure ...

Nothing much has happened lately. My IM football team (Stimulus Package) won its first game, I spent most of the weekend talking smack about fantasy football with a friend who was in town (I lost 109-110, thank you very much Santonio Holmes), I went to a reading by Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and for the first time in what seems like way too long, I got a really good run in today. It only lasted 2:20, but I did some stuff up in Tilden I hadn't done in a while and was absolutely bombing down the hills on the way back with a gorgeous sunset and 4 bridges in view and Tarkio's cover of Squeeze's Goodbye Girl on the iPod. I also finished listening to Erik Larsen's Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America . It's separately about both the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and a serial murderer who was operating in Chicago at the same time. It was recommended to me by a buddy of mine who lives in Chicago when I was visit...